Selwyn Hannington Dewdney was born October 22, 1909 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He and his family moved to Kenora, Ontario soon after his father, Alfred Daniel Alexander Dewdney, was named the second Bishop of Keewatin. Selwyn received his primary and secondary education in Prince Albert and Kenora before attending the University of Toronto and graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Astronomy and English in 1931. He received a High School Assistant's Certificate, Science and Mathematics, and an Art Specialist's Certificate from the Ontario College of Education in 1932. From 1934 to 1936, Dewdney attended the Ontario College of Art, and was named an Associate, OCA, with Honours. He spent several summers travelling thousands of miles, often by canoe, in northern Canada, accompanying his father on visits to northern missions as a student missionary and as a member of a Geological Survey of Canada crew.
Moving to London, Ontario in 1936, Dewdney accepted a position as High School Assistant and Art Specialist at Sir Adam Beck Collegiate Institute, teaching Geography, Art and English until his resignation in 1945. From then on, he devoted his efforts to writing, art and research. Dewdney published his first novel, Wind Without Rain, in 1946, and his second, Christopher Breton, in 1978. Daylight in the Swamp, his memoirs, were edited by his son A. K. Dewdney and published posthumously in 1997. He wrote They Shared to Survive: the native people of Canada and The Hungry Time, co-authored Social Studies for Canadians, contributed a chapter on the St. Lawrence for Rivers of the World, and edited Norval Morrisseau's Legends of My People: the great Ojibway. Dewdney wrote and illustrated The Map That Grew and illustrated a number of textbooks and books for young readers.
One of the first London artists to paint abstracts in the 1940s and early 1950s, Dewdney painted a number of murals on commission for several clients, including Sir Adam Beck Collegiate and Victorian Hospital. He had virtually stopped painting by the end of the 1950s to devote his time to other interests, but remained active in the local art community.
Dewdney served as president of the Western Art League in 1957 and 1960, and from 1960 to 1962 was Executive Director of the short-lived Artists' Workshop in London which provided art classes to adults and employed as instructors a numberof young London artists, 5 including Jack Chambers, Greg Curnoe, Bernice Vincent, Tony Urquhart, Gillian Saward and John O'Henly, In 1953, Selwyn Dewdney was appointed psychiatric art therapist at Westminster (now Parkwood) Hospital and began using art to help in the treatment of psychiatric patients. He was soon joined in this work by his wife Irene. Selwyn published a number of journal articles and lectured on their art therapy approach. Together, the Dewdney's pioneered an objective, client-oriented technique that developed into the first art therapy program in Canada. While Irene continued with art therapy work, Selwyn began to devote more of his time to his pioneering studies of Canadian native rock art.
Conducting extensive field work for a number of museums, foundations, government departments and the Canada Council, Dewdney recorded 290 rock art sites in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, the Northwest Territories, Michigan and Minnesota, and conducted studies of selected sites. He lecture on native art at various museums, universities and conferences; submitted a number of reports and articles for journals and museum and government department publications; and wrote, with Kenneth E. Kidd, Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes, published in 1962. Dewdney co-founded and was elected Senior Associate of Canadian Rock Art Associates. His continuing interest in Canadian native art extended to publishing a number of journal articles, lecturing at the Ontario College of Art, writing Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway (1975), his contribution of Morrisseau's book, and serving on the boards of N'Amerind, the Ontario division of the Indian-Eskimo Association, and Indian Crafts of Canada.
